Shuttle XPC SZ170R8 V2: Small but Powerful

Compact, efficient and incredibly powerful if you spring for the right parts, the Shuttle XPS SZ170R8 V2 has a lot going for it. The small form factor of the motherboard does not take away from its power. Even better is its capability as a portable machine.

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The live-action adaptation project for Ritz Kobayashi’s Mahjong manga is in full swing, and we are getting two new trailer s, which gives us new details on the project’s upcoming live-action film. The first video is the 60-second version, while the second video is the shorter 30-second version. According to the videos, the film is slated...

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We also bumped into Synology who has changed the model name of its upcoming DS412 NAS to DS413, although it'll still be the model down from the DS412+, so the naming scheme doesn't quite make sense. We did also get some more technical details and the DS413 is sporting a Freescale QorlQ SoC which is based on the PowerPC architecture rather than ARM, as well as 1GB of RAM. We're not entirely sure which QorlQ model Synology is using in the DS413, but the SoC does have one interesting feature for those that are concerned about their data getting in the wrong hands.

The QorlQ SoC sports 256-bit AES encryption engine which can encrypt written data at over 24MB/s and decrypt at over 48MB/s. This should make it a suitable solution for a lot of smaller companies that work with sensitive data, as even if the NAS would end up the wrong hands, the data would be secure. Apparently the Freescale processor is also extremely power efficient, especially in hibernation mode where the DS413 draws a mere 3.3W which should be compared to 11W for the current DS411. The DS413 will hit retail sometime next month after it has been officially unveiled at Computex.

A couple of other companies that caught our eye were Honeywld and DAGi. Honeywld was showing off its latest HD-6000 “Smart TV Player” which in itself isn't a big deal, as there are hundreds if not thousands of these devices already in the market. However, what sets the HD-6000 apart from most of the competition right now is that it uses the same Marvell Cortex-A9 SoC as we'll see in the next generation Google TV boxes. On top of that it's also running Android 4.0.x which is pretty novel, as most of these devices are stuck on 2.x. Feature wise it sports an HDMI 1.4 port, composite video, stereo audio and optical S/PDIF out. It also has 4GB of internal flash memory and 1GB of DDR3 memory, a 10/100Mbps Ethernet port, built in 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi and a pair of USB 2.0 ports.

The HD-6000 will play just about every media format you can throw at it including H.264, MPEG1/2/4, VC1, WMV, VP6/8 and RMVB. It handles all common containers such as MKV, MOV, AVI and so on and it also handles all standard audio formats, although there was no mention of Dolby or DTS audio support. It handles all standard file formats, including NTFS and EXT3, although there's no support for exFAT. The HD-6000 also sports DLNA 1.5 and Samba support and it will allow you to stream various web content from a wide range of sources thanks to an HTML5 compatible webkit browser and Flash 10.2 support. A pretty neat piece of kit if you ask us, although it's not the best looking media player we've seen.

DAGi on the other hand nearly blew our mind with its capacitive touch screen cards, or iCard. If you look at the picture below you'll see what looks like a playing card with a picture of Steve Jobs on the opposite side. If you look carefully at the rear of the card you'll see a small dot in the middle and this is part of the magic going on. Place the card picture side down on an iPad or an iPhone running DAGi's software, put your finger on the small dot and the picture on the card will appear on the screen.

Sadly DAGi refused to tell anyone at the event as to how their technology works, but one of many ideas is to use it as a security solution so you don't have to remember long passwords. It can also be used for promotions where information on the card takes you to a website or downloads an app on your device. What is clear is that they're not using RFID or barcodes here and the camera is not involved. We'll see if they managed to wow some customers and maybe this will be something you'll be able to get your hands on sooner rather than later.

For more details on all of the winners and their products, either head over to the Best Choice Awards stand at Computex if you're in Taipei for the show, or check out the website in the link below.